Single mum Rissa Blakeley never expected to find herself homeless, living in a hotel room with seven of her children.
"It definitely is [tough], but I'm trying to keep strong for the kids," she says.
After camping on a friend's property for a month, Ms Blakeley says rainy weather forced her to reach out to a local charity for help, and she has been living in a Rockhampton hotel for the past two weeks.
The prospect of a more permanent solution for her family is bleak, with at least 1,000 people on the social housing waitlist in the central Queensland region.
It is a story that is becoming all too familiar in regional areas as the housing crisis escalates, but a group of central Queensland organisations has banded together to come up with its own solutions.
What's the solution?
Looking at a block of run-down cottages set for demolition, Dave Grenfell, a member of the newly formed community-run The Shelter Collective, saw an opportunity.
The chair of Apprentices and Trainees Queensland said works would see 12 trainees transform the 20 one-bedroom and two-bedroom cottages into affordable housing.
The homes are on a large parcel of land in the Rockhampton suburb of Kawana belonging to aged care provider PresCare.
"They [PresCare] were going to put a retirement village here, but we've convinced them not to do that, [but] to let us turn them into affordable housing," Mr Grenfell says.
PresCare said though it is allowing the collective to renovate the homes, it was still considering expanding its aged care services in the area.
If it did that, it would leave the cottages intact, with a possible reconfiguration of their placement.
The renovations, which are expected to cost $1.6 million, will be done in stages.
"We believe we can rebuild these in a much more efficient manner than you can actually build it from scratch," Mr Grenfell says.
What is the Shelter Collective?
Fellow collective member Michelle Coats, who is the general manager of the Gladstone charity Roseberry Queensland, said the group had set up a fund for donations under the auspices of the Australian Communities Foundation.
The collective is also raising money for the 'Sleep Haven Coach' — a bus donated by Rothery's Coaches that is being refurbished for crisis homeless accommodation.
The $235,000 project will fit the bus out with beds, air conditioning, laundry facilities, and an outdoor section for stranded pets.
"[Governments] want to build long-term housing solutions, which is where their money is invested in, but we're seeing the need is immediate," Ms Coats says.
"We're trying to look for any and every project that we can put our hands on, [such as the Sleep Haven Coach] to try to come up with immediate solutions."
This month, the federal government promised to build one million new homes by the end of the decade as part of its new housing accord.
The Queensland government also recently announced its $1 billion Housing Investment Fund would be doubled to $2 billion in a bid to tackle the housing crisis.
Nine households a day reaching out
Rissa Blakeley is hopeful initiatives run by the Shelter Collective will help her and others in similar situations.
The 37-year-old moved out of her Gladstone rental in September due to lease breaches.
She said after unsuccessfully applying for other rentals, she borrowed her ex-partner's camper trailer and several tents to stay "in the middle of a cow paddock" on a friend's rural property.
"[It was] dirty, hot, and wet at times … just not ideal," Ms Blakeley says.
As severe thunderstorms started rolling through, she knew camping was no longer an option, and Anglicare helped house the family of eight in a hotel.
"Finding ourselves in this situation, it was hard to reach out even further and say, 'well, hang on a minute, if this storm cell does come, we won't get out, we won't be able to have access to food or fresh water or showers or anything like that'," she says.
Anglicare central Queensland's Adam Klaproth got involved in the collective after seeing more and more families like Ms Blakeley's coming to his organisation for help.
He said that on average nine households a day were asking the organisation for housing assistance.
"We've had under a 0.5 per cent vacancy rate in our private rental market since August 2020, so what we're seeing on the ground is now working families struggling to get housing," Mr Klaproth says.
According to the Queensland Council of Social Services, there are 46,000 people on the social housing register across the state.
Though the issue is statewide, Mr Klaproth said he was concerned funding and measures would be concentrated in urban areas.
"We need short, quick solutions [like this] as well," he says.
